


Capers in Caps

by ComeHitherAshes



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Flirting, MacCready is actually a BAMF, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Older Woman/Younger Man, adorable puppy, canon-divergence, he's a mercenary, it's a match made in irradiated heaven, it's also a charming one, maccready's inner monologue is a sweary bastard, okay i'll stop, okay she's not the sole survivor, older sole survivor, she's a mercenary, then it's all stammer and corny pick up lines, trying to flirt with a ferocious mama yao guai, until he gets a crush, which surprises everyone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 17:02:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7516207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComeHitherAshes/pseuds/ComeHitherAshes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MacCready has counted the stars in the sky, he’s counted the rocks in the old cave, he’s counted the cracks in the new one, and now he wants to count the scars on a woman who’s forgotten more sunrises than he’s even seen.</p>
<p>It’s a little like a pup standing up to a wolf, but if there’s one thing that MacCready knows, he’s damn good at the eyes—<i>on</i> the eyes. He’s damn good at sweet-taking—sweet-<i>talking</i>. He’s fine, he’s got this in the bag, totally capable.</p>
<p>He was so fucked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Capers in Caps

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't hold out against little boy blue any longer, I'm visiting from the ghoul mayor fan club. 
> 
> This takes place in Hancock and my Sole Survivor's world, [Death in a Duster](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5702362/chapters/13136023), but Eloise has done more than her fair share of surviving - just not in the form of an icicle for two centuries. 
> 
> MacCready is this bright-eyed, bruised-heart to me, and I thought it time he found someone who could take him on and then some, someone who's been around the decimated block - so to speak. Eloise ain't no greenie, she's weathered, she's tough, ~~she's got a few grey hairs~~. There's only brief crossover with Pen and Hancock (and the rest of the Goodneighbor crew), so you CAN read this without it... But, y'know, you totally should.

> There's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet  
>  No matter where you live  
>  There'll always be a few things, maybe several things  
>  That you're going to find really difficult to forgive
> 
> \- The Mountain Goats, _'Up the Wolves'_

Say what you want about super mutants, they knew how to tie a room together; there was something about the ol' _bag of bloody bits hanging from the ceiling_ thing that just added some _colour_ to the place.

Admittedly that colour was red and absolutely rank, but still.

There was a lot caked on MacCready's boots, but then he had been squelching about in fuck knows what for a good half hour now, slowly working his way into the cluster of rundown buildings where the muties had made their base.

He'd been doing alright until one of those green assholes had gotten a hold of him.

One point-blank shot from his rifle and some serious arterial spray later, MacCready was holding his breath until it burned, until he could barely hear over the ridiculously loud thump of his heartbeat, until he could count the damn black spots on the inside of his eyelids. They danced like the ball on a roulette wheel he'd seen in the Wasteland, and he had a feeling his luck was up.

He'd been shot to shit, there were way too many holes in his favourite jacket, and as the cherry on the goddamn cake, some other merc had showed up on his job.

He had too much riding on this, he had put all his caps on black and he was already covered in red.

But hey – and he tilted his head in as much acknowledgement as he could when pressed into a corner and hiding for his life – it wasn't everyone that got personally sought out by one of the Commonwealth's biggest trading towns. Bunker Hill had asked for _him,_ and only him, so yeah he had damn well jumped at the chance.

Although maybe they hadn't just asked for him, maybe this was some sort of _two for the price of one_ deal, because he had spotted his merc-y shadow out of a window, too quick for him to sight through his scope but for some good gear and a hood that hid their face.

He had heard the boom of a grenade though, and so did the fucking mutant he'd been stalking, which was when he'd been slammed up against the wall by a meaty fist around his leg.

Upside down.

It was the _glamour_ of this job that he loved so much.

Still, the second grenade had been enough of a distraction to cut and bolt – or should that be bolt and cut? – leaving him as the only thing around for the muties to hunt, as the other merc seemed to be perfectly happy lobbing handhelds through available windows.

Glamour, and _style._

The merc was on their own, like him, which was unusual these days; everyone was part of some cliquey little gang with their callsigns and stupid names, like the Gunners.

Fuck, he hoped it wasn't a Gunner, if it was then he couldn't be held accountable for his actions. Winlock and Barnes were already hot on his tail, he didn't need some scrub giving his latest digs away – Goodneighbor's only downside, when they said they let reprobates in, they meant _all of 'em._

A pained roar answered another grenade, and MacCready started to think the mystery merc was planning to just blow the whole place up and him with it at this rate. He was a few floors up, the last place he wanted to be when there were mutants involved. Tight corners and narrow hallways were really unappreciated when you were about a third of their size.

Still, he could hide better than they could.

"Where you go?"

There was an angry grunt the likes of which only a super mutant could make, and MacCready tried his best to sink through the wall, or maybe transform into some inanimate object, like a hat stand. He'd be good at that; he had a hat, he was standing in a corner, it wasn't like you needed a graduate degree.

MacCready rifled through his pockets, and bit his cheek to stop from swearing aloud when his fingers could only find keys and not a damn single grenade of his own. Clearly he needed to hook up with this merc's dealer.

The booming footsteps got closer, too close, and MacCready decided that if he got out of this alive, he was going to hunt that fucking merc down and kill them for getting him stuck in here.

He readied his rifle and accepted his fate with a sigh – at least he'd go out stylishly dressed and leave a handsome corpse.

That, and a nice bucket of dirty water over his door in the Third Rail.

There was a rattle of gunfire, way too fast for a mutant's shitty pipe rifle and way too fast for his panicky heartrate. There was another grunt, a groan, and then the mutant lumbered backwards, shuddering with every bullet before finally collapsing inside the doorway.

Right where he was pretending to be a hat stand.

MacCready slammed to the floor, helped down by stinking green muscle and some sort of rag that was thankfully keeping him from touching wherever that smell was coming from. Breathing was out of the option, so he tried to heave the meathead's deadweight off and failed somewhat miserably.

Still, he could lay low here – he was very good at making the best of a bad situation – he had the keys for the safe, nabbed off the leader after a very nice headshot from the next building over, he just had to wait for whoever was out there to go away and the bounty was all his.

He had done all the hard work anyway, most of it, some of it.

Who needed that many grenades? It was just greedy.

MacCready fidgeted awkwardly as he tried to get his rifle to stop digging into his spine, and coughed when it felt like the body was getting heavier.

Weird.

A half-formed expletive wheezed out of his throat when somebody jumped onto the mutant's chest, assault rifle wheeling round the room before guarded green eyes flicked downwards in confusion.

They lit up like those glowing stones in the depths of Little Lamplight's cave, and MacCready tried to hate that slow-growing smile.

Unfortunately, he really, really didn't.

"Well, well, well," a painfully familiar voice murmured. It reminded him of smoke, secretive and silky, the way cigarette smoke curls softly through the air but you know that actually those delightful little sticks of death are slowly killing you. "What do we have here?"

It wasn't a Gunner.

Why couldn't it have been a Gunner? MacCready would have preferred _literally anyone else_ other than the woman who flipped her assault rifle over a shoulder and leaned into a hip laden down with grenades, her smile gaining a flash of teeth as she looked down at him, pinned and pretty damn defenceless.

Then again, that wasn't new when she was around.

Eloise pushed her hood back, her short black hair neat if it wasn't for the way she ruffled it constantly, a sweep of soot-stained fingers that pushed back and then pulled forward, as if trying to hide the pale splotches on her forehead. It was designed to do the opposite but it always drew his attention, made him wonder what she had to hide when she wore the rest of her scars so well.

She was a mercenary, she was covered in scars, from the criss-crosses on her hands to the nasty one through her left brow, but they suited her, she was one of the toughest people he had ever met. There was a catch on the left of her lip, something that clawed the corner up so that it looked as if she sneered with eyes so green they looked like chipped gemstones, eyes that only ever seemed to see him as—

"Pup! What a surprise."

MacCready scowled up at her, and knew he must look like such an idiot, trying to be the big man whilst stuck under a massive one – if you could call mutants, men, anymore. "Stop calling me that."

Eloise laughed, a short bark of a thing. "Compared to me," she answered simply, trailing off to gesture up and down her body. In her defence, it was a well-built body, hewn for long runs out in the Wealths and battered by everything in it, her olive skin tanned and her left jaw burned by something nastier than the sun.

It was the body of a woman who worked for one of the best mercenary gangs in the area.

She was also a good decade older than him.

"You need a hand?"

_If only._

"No, no," he denied smoothly, even though he was actually starting to struggle for air and he couldn't quite focus on her anymore. This always happened, no matter where they were or how long it had been since he had last seen her, he always ended up looking like a twat in front of the one person who could lay claim to half-a-dozen legends in the Wealths.

The one person who could get him into her group, into trouble and hot water and the damn good bounties, and all she ended up seeing was some idiot who got stuck under mutants.

She was also the one person who made him stammer, made him forget all his clever lines and witty charm, and he didn't fucking understand _why?_ Yeah, she was a crack-shot, and yeah, she had pistol-whipped more people than he had even met, but he had promised himself he wouldn't do this again, wouldn't care more than he had to – the few friends he had were bad enough.

And they were _not_ friends, she had made that very clear.

Eloise's hand caught at his after she lazily stepped off, her fingerless gloves warm and her calloused fingers warmer. "Don't play the hero, pup."

"Right, 'cause you never do that," he drawled sarcastically, and couldn't tell if she snorted with him or at him – he never could figure her out, and it wasn't like he spent ages replaying their conversations in his head or anything, he wasn't weird.

"We're mercs," she explained with a shrug as he dusted himself off, "we don't get to be heroes."

It wasn't strictly true, not when one of them carried a claw insignia on their leathers, not when the Wolves always finished a job and reaped the rewards afterwards.

MacCready's eyes narrowed even as he took careful note of her relaxed stance and the distance between them, took note of the way her smile crooked at the corner and he thought it _so fucking_ — "You're not having the keys."

Eloise raised a scarred brow, her expression telling him that he was an idiot for even mentioning the damn things. "As much as I'd love to snatch whatever it is from under your nose, I'm just on clear up duty."

MacCready slumped, a part of him hoping she would fight him for them. "Seriously?"

Through some quirk of fate, Eloise still managed to be an inch shorter than even him – not that he had thought about it much – so when she smirked, her green eyes peered up at him from under dark brows. "Yeah, shame you weren't more friendly, we could have split the reward after that headshot."

"Shi—oot," MacCready bit out, desperately trying to figure out how long she had been watching him whilst simultaneously trying to backpedal. Eloise would get far more caps than him – it wasn't just the prestige, it was the assurance, because Wolves never backed down. It was what made them so damn difficult to get into, they picked from the best – or the brash, depending on how you wanted to look at it.

He certainly had never wanted to join. Nope, not him, he had way better things to do, he _liked_ being his own man, wandering here and there as he pleased, no gang to drag him down or having to split the reward with anyone other than people he liked.

Not that he really liked splitting it with them, either, and Pen made him feel guilty for demanding more caps when taking on a job. Quality cost caps, and besides, he had a comic book habit to sustain; they couldn't all be Generals and Mayors.

It was as Eloise had said, mercs didn't get to be the heroes.

"We could still split it," he tried, even though he knew full well she had done most of the work in the end.

Eloise heaved an exaggerated sigh, managing to look like she belonged in this room of crap and carnage with her gleaming gun and ragged leathers, as if she had been forged in the fires of a dying, irradiated sun. "Nah, think I'll head on back. Maybe I'll buy you a drink sometime to make up for it."

Before he could even voice his perky little _really?_ Eloise left with a mocking salute and a sly smile. "See you around, pup."

Her smile stuck in his head for the next hour.

He _really_ hated it, and her.

Especially her.

 

* * *

 

There was something about fuzzy, flickering neon lights that managed to make MacCready's tired heart soar.

Goodneighbor sprawled about the buildings like some mythic beast, limbs reaching down sidestreets and alleyways only to be tipped in a hundred claws and a dozen turrets. Its armour was concrete walls, its teeth a hundred guards, and at its head was a cunning ghoul with a rust-haired shadow. It breathed cigarette smoke and ate raiders for fun, so MacCready always thought of it like a dragon from a comic book he'd read once.

A heavily irradiated, pretty fucked up, flightless sort of dragon.

It was also home, and the end of the road, and the road back from his latest contract had been damn hard. He was bleeding from at least three different places, his right leg was still smashed to fuck by those wayward mutant fists, and he was dog-tired.

Still, he was laden down with caps, and that was all that mattered, that and a drink before he fell into bed. It had taken him far too long to get back from Bunker Hill, a score of raiders and a bunch of ferals like damn speed bumps in the road.

Some of them literally were now, not that there were any cars to run 'em over.

It was ridiculously unfair, why couldn't Eloise—

Why couldn't the _Wolves_ see him at his best?

"One more step an' you're dog meat!"

MacCready shaded his eyes against one of the floodlights fringing Goodneighbor's walls, and then carried on walking. "I'm already dog meat, Newton, being riddled with bullets don't make a difference, 'cept they might chip a tooth."

Newton snickered, holding his weight against the door so MacCready couldn't push in. "What's the password?"

MacCready's forehead smacked against the wood. Inwardly, he chanted vicious swears, but outwardly he kept his language fairly clean – he'd made a promise, after all. "Is it _go screw yourself, Newton?_ "

"Nope!"

MacCready groaned in annoyance, every twinging muscle seeming to agree with him. "Let me in or I'll kill you."

Newton's narrowed eye appeared in a gap in the boards. "Was that a guess or a threat?"

MacCready shoved against the door, satisfied when Newton yelped and fell backwards. "Both," he said smugly, but helped the man up, brow no longer raising at the cobalt blue of his hair after living here for so long. "What've you done wrong to be on guard duty?"

"Hancock's out, nothin' else to do," Newton replied with a shrug, so MacCready just blinked at him and waited for the acquiescing sigh. " _Fine,_ I may've been juggling with Fahrenheit's hair dyes an' kinda dropped 'em."

MacCready winced, his laugh tired but happy, already enjoying being back in the town that never slept – he'd read that somewhere, words above a town of lights. Goodneighbor might be for the lawless, but they _did_ have laws, they were just more about spending all your hard-earned caps in Third Rail and trying not to piss off Fahrenheit.

After a brief catch up with Newton, MacCready dragged his sorry self along the streets, the air thick with the scents of campfires and chems. They were good smells, homely smells, even if he did prefer a cigarette to a sedative, and he preferred a drink over both.

Third Rail was never quiet, it was never even shut, not with Charlie at the bar. MacCready automatically glanced at Hancock's balcony and stifled the little thread of worry that always sprang up when his friends were on the road.

He worried too much, Lucy had always said so, but maybe if he had worried more then she would still be alive.

The sudden slam of music and moonshine pulled him out of the thought before it wrecked him, but it would just hit him later instead, it would wait until he had crawled under his covers and pushed aside a few comics, and then he would _think._

Ham clapped him on the back as he walked in, a couple regulars waved, but Fahrenheit was pacing like an angry animal alongside the bar, which could only mean—

"No, they're not back yet," she snapped in his direction, but took a double-glance when he made a dumbfounded noise. "Oh, MacCready, it's you."

It was always nice to be welcomed home, but he still gave her a lopsided grin and admitted, "Nah, I was curious too."

Fahrenheit threw him a withering look, but the force behind it wasn't the same now that her hair was fading to its natural reddish-blonde. "You and everyone else. How's Bunker Hill?"

MacCready didn't bother saying that the colour suited her, he liked his balls attached to his body, thanks very much. "Good," he answered, fingers drumming on the bar. "Stockton's pleased, his daughter's back – I didn't even know she was missing."

Fahrenheit's attention whipped back to him, but she schooled it almost immediately, a shrug lifting her shoulders. "Good news."

"Yeah," he said casually, as if she hadn't slipped up. It wasn't like her to react – _ever,_ she beat him at poker every single time, to the point that it wasn't even fucking fun anymore. Hancock was the only one who could read her, the two of them like different sides of the same coin.

He wondered if he would ever have another friend like that.

Fahrenheit gave a grunt when he would have flipped a few caps Charlie's way for his drink, which he took to mean it was on the house. "For the Stockton news."

MacCready swigged from his bottle and shrugged, secretly pleased. He liked Fahrenheit, she was the only one who didn't tease him about his age, and she scared the shit of him, so yeah, he was happy for the recognition – even if it was because Hancock wasn't there and she was desperate for some sanity. "Give me a shout if you need me, I'm off to bed."

There was a hint of a grateful nod, and something else, but he wasn't sure what. It looked a little sly, and sly on Fahrenheit only made her more fucking terrifying, so he scarpered.

He hadn't lived these few short years because he played with smiling sharks.

Taking his drink with him, he set off for the VIP section and frowned at the noises of people in the lounge. That was odd. It was available only to a few, and with Hancock away and Fahrenheit at the bar – and he only just back – there weren't many others—

A chorus of howls interspersed with hysterical laughter stopped him in his tracks.

_Fuck._ It seemed the Wolves were in town.

No wonder Eloise had been so happy to dash, she had the Third Rail and the rest of her crew waiting for her – he had felt the same, but his friends were scattered around the Commonwealth and now even his bar had been taken over.

Their ridiculously infectious howls that had the rest of the bar grinning, and MacCready found himself hesitating in his own damn watering hole.

The last time he had run into all the Wolves together, he had been a Gunner, and he'd felt like a fucking amateur in comparison, especially when his guard-mate had almost blown them all up by pulling a pin prematurely on a grenade.

The oldest Wolf, the one with a hair so shaggy it looked like a grey mane, had shaken his head in despair before telling them to clear off and let the professionals clean up.

He still cringed about it sometimes, in those quiet, awful moments before sleep.

Somebody turned the corner he was peering around, and he scrambled backwards, almost falling right onto his damn backside. It took a second to focus, mostly because his eyes had wanted to close when he realised who it was.

For the second time today, MacCready looked up leather-bedecked body and saw one scarred, black eyebrow raising at him. "Trying to pick up some tricks, MacCready?"

He scowled, but at least she was calling him by his name this time, and at least he was managing to string a sentence together. "No, just wondering who let you in."

Eloise shrugged, her shoulder leaning against the wall as if she owned it. "The Wolves go where they like."

Annoyingly, it was true. The mercenary gang was one of Goodneighbor's regulars, they paid their tab and were always damn good at their job. If anyone was going to nick a contract from under his nose, it was one of them.

Eloise's gaze slipped downwards for a moment before darting back, and he could only imagine that she thought he looked like bedraggled shit. "Not following me, are you?"

_Damn it,_ that's what he had wanted to say.

"We can still split that bounty," he said, angling a look into the lounge, into the depths of a crew he had admired for so long.

Eloise shifted her weight until she stood in his way, and some of that amusement he always seemed to see on her face had drifted away. "Sorry, no room for pups."

MacCready flushed hotly and hated every second of it. It had taken him three months to get enough clout behind his name to meet one of the Wolves, enough caps to get into the VIP lounge in Goodneighbor – before he had earned his room, his _keep_. He had stepped through the door, tripped over his own feet, and went as red as he was right now when that Wolf looked at him with a scarred, raised brow.

She had said the exact same thing then.

"Otso isn't much older than me," he insisted, jerking his head at a guy half-sprawled on one of the sofas. If possible, Eloise raised her brow even higher, pulling the scar tight and revealing some of the pale marks on her forehead.

"Old enough," she murmured. "Thought you were running with the Gunners, anyway?"

"Not anymore."

Eloise paused, her green eyes roving over him, but it felt like she was looking for faults, for flaws, and he fidgeted like a fucking child.

"Good," she said simply. "You were wasted with them."

MacCready blinked in surprise, expecting another jibe, not a compliment – and once again he was on the back foot and flushing and fuck everything. "How would you know that?"

She smiled as if he had amused her. "I hear things."

"From who?" MacCready asked curiously, a scowl on his brow. "If it's Winlock or Barnes, they're assholes, don't listen to them."

Eloise's face dropped, her expression schooled of all that possible interest, and it was like he'd just shot himself in the foot. "I don't consort with Gunners."

MacCready warily eyed the tension, waiting a few seconds to murmur, "Nah, me either, bunch of pricks."

Eloise looked down, her jaw tense before she forcibly took a breath and tried a tight smile, as if she was making an effort to be nice rather than punch him in the face – which was an expression he was quite used to seeing, actually. That and the punch.

"You picked up under Hancock's banner then, huh?"

MacCready bristled defensively. It didn't matter how much he admired her, admired the way she could kick the shit out of everyone she met – and it was just admiration, it certainly wasn't a fucking _crush_ as Pen had called it – his actual friends still came first. "Hancock's a good guy."

As always, Eloise looked at him as if she was judging what he had just said or done, and so that made him try and judge himself, made him think it over, made him wonder why he even bothered trying to act like a human being around her because he was clearly a fucking idiot who got his shoelaces confused with his grenade pins.

At least his palms weren't doing the sweating thing, clearly he was over that, that was old news.

Eloise hummed interestedly, and his palms did the sweating thing. "So, what's next on the bounty list?"

MacCready rubbed his aching leg as if he wasn't itching for a Stimpak and scoffed, "Like I'd tell you."

This time, her grin was full of teeth and tease and torment. "So untrusting, pup."

He glowered, unsure if he preferred her pissed off or playing with him, so he crossed his arms and demanded, "Why, what's on yours?"

"Diamond City, they've been having more problems with mutants," she admitted easily, surprising him until she winked. "Maybe they're taking naps on their snipers."

Okay, no, he preferred her pissed off. "I had that under control until you showed up!"

"Sure you did," Eloise drawled, attention drifting to each of the wounds she shouldn't be able to see, as if she had paid particular notice to his injuries. "I was just a hindrance."

"Yeah, you were!" It always ended up like this, her smirking and him dangerously close to stamping his foot, so he turned on that one foot and called over his shoulder, "You still owe me a drink."

When her surprised laugh followed him down the hallway, he smiled all the way out of Third Rail.

Progress.

 

* * *

 

Eloise watched MacCready leave the bar entirely, a faint smile playing about her lips. At the sound of the Third Rail's front door being slammed shut, she snorted and carried on up to the bar, ordering another round for her boisterous crew.

It was incredibly annoying how endearing that little shit could be, and it didn't help that he was limping along like a bruised brahmin calf with the determination of a deathclaw.

It took a little too long to realise her far too fond reverie was being watched.

Eloise sighed and tried not to let the corners of her mouth kick up any higher. "What do you want, Úlfur?"

The eldest of their group gave her a grin missing a fair few teeth, his grizzled face open and his grey hair pulled back into a tail. He kept it long no matter how many times she told him to cut it, he said it was the style where he came from, but Eloise had never been able to figure out where exactly that was.

"The kids will say you're playin' favourites."

Eloise rolled her eyes, closed them when those same kids started hooting with laughter from the VIP lounge – a name that made her cringe every time it was mentioned. They weren't kids, not really, but a good handful of years separated her from them – and she never let herself forget it.

"I didn't let him in to the group," she remarked defensively.

"You didn't knock 'im on his arse, either," Úlfur replied, knowing full well she had done so to a number of hopefuls who showed up on the Wolves' doorstep – whether it was in some bar they had claimed for the hour or on the edges of their campfire, trained on by a half-dozen guns.

MacCready had chosen Goodneighbor as his stand, and Eloise had given him credit for even getting into the place, let alone to have the _cajones_ for approaching them. Of course, he had tried a few times again since then, the last one under a guise of disinterest, as if she couldn't see his wide, innocent eyes.

Eloise winced at that odd thought. "Didn't deter him last time, did it?"

"No, but then you don't normally help 'em up afterwards."

Eloise threw her hands up in the air in exasperation as if she was entirely infallible and this was all awful slander. "He looked so distraught, like I'd kicked his puppy— like _he was_ a damn puppy!"

Úlfur gave her a dirty wink. "Never knew you liked 'em young."

Eloise didn't bother refraining from hitting him, hard, in the shoulder, but the bastard's grin didn't fade, so she gave him an exasperated look. "He's too young to be committing to us."

"You were younger."

Eloise looked at him properly then, her fingers tightening on her bottle and strain sneaking up her spine. "Yeah, I was, and look how that turned out."

Úlfur sobered immediately, eyes closing briefly. "Aye, you're right. I'm sorry."

Eloise shrugged, the weight of past grievances a familiar thing on her shoulders. "Nothing to be sorry for."

Úlfur looked like he wanted to argue, but whether he knew it was pointless or whether he knew she had already started down the path of memory, he simply gripped her arm in silent apology and took the tray of drinks with him.

Eloise stared at the bar for a few minutes before grabbing her bottle and heading upstairs, sharing a nod with Ham before she stepped into the night sky.

Goodneighbor was still bustling, still noisy, drifters sharing food and conversation, the generators humming and the always present sound of far off gunshots. It was too busy for her, she liked the sound of silence, of the reeds rustling and bugs chirruping – even if those bugs were probably bigger than her.

"Lou?"

Eloise hummed a question, turning to see Otso twisting his hat between his hands – some sort of military helmet he had stolen off of a Gunner a few weeks ago.

He was their newest member, snatched off of the streets when he had pegged a feral between the eyes from a hundred metres away. It helped that he had saved Úlfur from a nasty bite wound, and fuck knew the ancient bastard had enough of those already.

"Can we stay for a while tomorrow? Kleo said she has new stock, me an' Susi wanna see."

Eloise tried not to smile, hiding her indulgent streak. "Why are you asking me?"

Otso gave a shrug of thin shoulders, still too skinny despite her efforts of feeding him up. "Úlfur said it was up to you, somethin' about puppy dog eyes?"

Eloise made a mental note to smack that old man right about the fucking jaw. "Yeah, sure we can – don't touch unless Kleo says you can though, okay? If she rips your arms off, it's not my problem."

Unfazed by the brutality of that, Otso gave her a bright grin. "Thanks, Lou!"

When he had scampered off downstairs, Eloise huffed a quiet laugh and shook her head, her voice loud in the relative quiet. "Kids."

She did not see the teal-coloured cap hunkered on the balcony above, just as she didn't hear the soft sounds of almost-curses, she was too busy cursing herself, low and vitriolic.

Eloise was tired, she was tired of caring, caring too much for things that had happened and things that might, caring too little for herself in comparison. It wasn't fun anymore, she didn't leap out of bed, she crawled. She didn't smile anymore, she sneered.

Unless she happened to find a blue-eyed merc talking shit whilst stuck under a super mutant, she smiled then, she even laughed sometimes. MacCready had never questioned her calling him _pup,_ and so she had never told him she meant something with a few more claws and a few more teeth.

A nest the size of a vertibird and a cracked shell nestled in the middle, Eloise had suffered the scratch through her brow by a deathclaw as high as her knee. When she had yelped, that brave little beast tripped on its tail in surprise, and Eloise had run from the shrieks of a mother coming to protect her pup.

Another brave little beast had fallen over his feet when he had seen her all that time ago, and so she had named him.

_Pup._

MacCready had more teeth, he just didn't realise yet, and she didn't want to cut those teeth on what was coming her way.

Eloise heaved a sigh and tipped her drink back, savouring the slightly warm scrape of room-temperature beer in the balmy night.

She was getting too old for this shit.

**Author's Note:**

> It took until I rewatched S6 of Walking Dead that I realised "Wolves" really wasn't a good choice. Whoops?
> 
> Endless thanks and hugs, as always, to [inkquery](https://inkquery.tumblr.com/), who's been an amazing beta and an amazing help as I wrangled with a couple tricksy mercs instead of a pair of charmers. I'm here and on [Tumblr](http://comehitherashes.tumblr.com) if you fancy a chat, I'm on bed-rest after surgery so headcanon and comments are always welcome! <3


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